Contemporary technology prevalently involves electric currents for the operation of transistors and other electronic devices. The velocity of electric signals through conductors and semi-conductors, namely—the response time of the (semi)-conductor to the input of an electric signal, is bounded by the physical limits of electric currents. A prolonged response time curbs the operational efficiency of the electronic device. For example, the speed of electric current through a conducting medium is about 6,000 km/sec and through a semi-conductor, such as a PN transistor is about 100 km/sec. In a transistor, a small power electronic signal (“base”) is used to control the amplification of a second electronic signal (“collector”), whose output (“emitter”) is thus selectively amplified. A typical transistor includes semiconductor media in which the speed of electrons as information bearers is as mentioned above. A processor typically contains 1 Million to 10 Million transistors.
For example, Pentium III® processor manufactured by Intel® is known to include around 7.5 Million transistors. A typical electronic path in a transistor is 0.18 microns, thus a typical path in a processor could extend to 1.5 meters. The conduction of electric current through electronic devices, such as conductors, transistors, resistors, coils and capacitors, encounters inevitable retarding forces that decelerate the electrons and diminish the electric current. These forces lead to the heating of the electronic device (with impractical exceptions such as ‘super-conductors’). The intrinsic heating of transistors, which are condensed by millions in electronic devices such as processors, may lead to damaging overheating. Overheating is avoided by taking different measures. In case of processors, the processing speed is reduced and in case of electronic devices, the capacity of the electronic device is reduced. In all cases, the overheating of the electronic device is avoided in different ways, such as, installing cooling fins, electric fans, operating in a relatively cold environment, and the like). In order to reduce overheating, the electric current has to be limited. Operating at a lower current causes a transistor to operate at a lower switching rate, and thus, in case of a processor, the number of operations per unit time is reduced. For example, current Pentium IV® processors and their equivalents are designed to handle operations in the scale of Gigaflops (“flops” means—floating point operations per second), in a properly cooled environment. The passage of electric currents also requires minimal dimensions of the physical conductor and a minimal energy for the operation thereof, and is also subject to physical manufacturing limits. Minimal energy E is required, for instance, for turning a device on and off, and is given by E=ln2·k·T, wherein ln2 is the natural logarithm of 2, k is Boltzmann's constant, and T is the temperature of the device in degrees Kelvin. Kazimir's Effect, wherein electric current is blocked by the pressure exerted by the spontaneous appearance of external elementary particles, also requires minimal sizing of the conducting medium—above 50 nanometers—to avoid such blockage. In addition, a parallel use of an electronic device, namely—the simultaneous operation of a single device for performing multiple operations, is almost impossible due to the mutual interfering of electric currents within the device.
Devices known in the prior art involve optical signal manipulation. U.S. Pat. No. 5,093,802 issued to Hait, teaches the use of modulated input beams that are able to produce interference fringes. The interference fringes are separated into constructive interference component regions and destructive interference component regions. Thus, output from individual functions is provided, that results from the interference which occurs in the separated interference-fringe component regions. This provides a logic circuit element, wherein the Boolean value of such a component, which is associated with its brightness, will be a function of values of the input beams. Mask separators with holes, or holograms made up of many subholograms are used to separate fringe component regions, and to direct function interconnecting beams.
Another device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,793,905 issued to Maier et al., which teaches the switching of two incoming linearly polarized beams having orthogonal polarization. The disclosed invention requires employment of GaAs crystal as an anisotropic, birefringent object, for affecting the polarization of the outgoing light, whose intensity depends strongly on the intensity of one of the incoming beams. Thus the device can operate as an optical equivalent of an electronic device based on transistors.